The No Child Left Behind Act mandated the development of statewide alternate assessments to measure the academic achievement of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The valid assessment of all test takers is critical due to its high-stakes nature and the use of its results to inform instruction. Given the heterogeneity of the…

We have two aims here. Our first is to articulate what gains may be made by students who engage in our course to determine what exactly is gained by students who participate in such experiences. We believe such courses have educational value, but needed to find a way to articulate our course's success in helping students meet our stated learning…

This research explored the knowledge, skills, and strategies early childhood teachers possess related to implementing curriculum and authentic assessment. Research suggests that early educators rate their knowledge of curriculum and authentic assessment and their implementation of both as excellent. Despite these self-reported, high levels of…

The emergence of and the attention given to culture in the evaluation field over the last decade has created a heightened awareness of and need for evaluators to understand the complexity and multidimensionality of evaluations within multicultural, multiracial, and cross-cultural contexts. In this article, the authors discuss how cultural…

This paper reports the findings of a national study involving 534 lecturers from 33 higher learning institutions in Malaysia to find out their self-reported practices and perceived competencies in assessment for learning. Data were collected using a 24-item assessment practice inventory drawn from five of the six standards stipulated in an…

Concept inventories hold tremendous promise for promoting the rigorous evaluation of teaching methods that might remedy common student misconceptions and promote deep learning. The measurements from concept inventories can be trusted only if the concept inventories are evaluated both by expert feedback and statistical scrutiny (psychometric…

This study builds on a previous pilot study conducted by Alkharusi, Aldhafri, Alnabhani, and Alkalbani (2012) to explore educational assessment attitudes, competence, knowledge, and practices of in-service teachers in the Sultanate of Oman. The present study extends the previous pilot study by surveying a larger sample of in-serivce teachers…

This study examined the use of measures of student learning computed using end-of-year assessments (distal measures) versus measures of student learning associated with a single lesson (proximal measures) as criterion scores for the validity of observations of teachers' pedagogical skills. The validity coefficients computed using distal…

Adult learning policies, like any other policies, need to be effective: they need to reach their objectives and attain the desired impacts, which should be carefully defined. Understanding the performance of policies allows policy makers to change and improve them. A growing body of research and statistics provides important insights into how…

Historically speaking, students were judged long before they were marked. The tradition of marking, or scoring, pieces of work students offer for assessment is little more than two centuries old, and was introduced mainly to cope with specific problems arising from the growth in the numbers graduating from universities as the industrial revolution…

Recent educational accountability efforts have married student assessments with reform mandates and sanctions. As a result, students--beginning in early elementary grades--are feeling the pressures of this new era of high-stakes accountability. This article chronicles a story of the consequences of high-stakes testing on a father and his son.…

Background/Context: Principles of evidential reasoning have often been discussed in the context of educational and psychological measurement with respect to construct validity and validity arguments. More recently, Mislevy proposed the metaphor of assessment as an evidentiary argument about students' learning and abilities given their…

Animations have long been perceived as an effective tool in teaching and learning. While students' reception towards animations has often been studied, there is also literature covering how teachers perceive and incorporate animations into their classes. At a research intensive university in Hong Kong, animations on the topic of university…

In the latter part of the 20th century, behavioral scientists and society generally adopted a cultural belief that cognitive ability was the most significant determinant of educational and workforce outcomes. This led to efforts to raise students' test scores, the promotion of teachers who were successful in doing so, and heavy if not…

The Common Core wave has swept the country. The expectation is in place for a rapid implementation of both the curriculum and the assessments. The author visited schools across the country as an external evaluator to review their transition plans, and he was struck by the great unevenness of the preparation across districts and schools. What are…